Fabrics are made from fibrous fleeces (of which the fibres may be staple fibres or continuous filaments) in a variety of ways. An increasingly important proportion of fleece fabric production is made by knitting stitch loops in a fibre web or fleece so that the loops extend in seams lengthwise of the fabric. The seams are knitted by a row of compound needles which reciprocate to penetrate the fleece and draw the loops through to the rear surface.
It is required to have the fleece fibres orientated across the needle row in order that the individual fibres shall be engaged in stitch loops in laterally spaced seams, if the fabric is to have sufficient widthwise strength and dimensional stability. By orientation, in this context, is meant, of course, that the fibres are not necessarily absolutely straight and parallel to the needle row as they are presented to it, merely that a good proportion of them shall extend in directions parallel or inclined to the row-wise direction.
To this end, a carded web (which has lengthwise orientation) is cross folded into a fleece having several layers, the lengthwise direction of the cross folded fleece being the widthwise direction of the web as it comes from the card, so that the fibre orientation is now widthwise. This operation also has the effect of increasing the thickness of the fleece so that different weights of fabric may be produced by folding the web into fleeces of different thickness.
Such a widthwise orientated fleece may then be fed directly to the needle row, or it may first be rolled up and stored until required, then fed from the roll.